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I spent eleven years watching what was coming before it arrived. That was the job. You track signals. You file reports. You cc people who don't read them. Then one day you're reviewing procurement data on a Thursday afternoon and realize that the people who are supposed to be watching aren't. Nobody is.

Anyway, I started asking where my reports were going. Got canned six months later. Technically a resignation. The paperwork is somewhere in this rat box apartment but good luck finding it.

At first, PALESIGNAL was a personal log. Keeping notes is an old habit. Then the notes got organized. Then I built a tagging system. Then I realized I already had the files. I wrote most of them.

I don't have a theory. I have files. Each entry is something real, something already in motion, something that will affect people who are processing it alone, in separate tabs, with nobody to compare notes with.

All I know is I'm one person with one clearance history and one massive set of blind spots. Together we're more than that. The tech serf, the tech serf's boss who is slightly less of a serf, the nurse, the trucker, the broke artist, the person who got automated out in 2025, the one reading this at 2am with a hand deep in the Cheetos bag...the picture is incomplete without you.

PALESIGNAL is my attempt to collect that picture. It's also, my therapist has noted, “not a substitute for vulnerability and human connection.” Which I find ironic given we're in love.

I read everything.

— The Archivist_

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